ABSTRACT
Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) grew out of efforts to understand and help people with major dif®culties in self-experiences (Gilbert, 2000, 2005; Gilbert & Irons, 2005; Gilbert & Procter, 2006). These are individuals with high shame and self-critical problems (Gilbert, 1998, 2003; Zuroff, Santor, & Mongrain, 2005). They are likely to have come from harsh, neglectful or abusive backgrounds, which have orientated their sense of `self' to be very threat focused (Bifulco & Moran, 1998). Indeed, they can be quick to perceive the threat of rejection, exclusion, put-down and shame coming from the outside world and to activate internal, self-critical attacks on themselves. Under these conditions, they are caught in a pincer movement of attacks from the outside and the inside; there is nowhere `safe'. Even if one helps such people to tone down the sensitivity to these threats and be less self-critical, they can still ®nd it dif®cult to feel much better. They also commonly experience another problem many clinicians will be familiar with; they may say, `I can see the logic of the CBT approach but it does not change how I feel about myself; I know, logically, that I am not a bad or unlovable person, but I still feel it', or `I know I was not to blame for the abuse, but I still feel there must be something wrong with me' (Lee, 2005). Stott (2007) has given a fascinating overview of such dif®culties, referring to them as rational-emotional dissociation. His ideas are based on the increasing awareness that we process information through multiple channels, which include fast-affect routes (on how something feels) and other cognitive routes derived from explicit knowledge of situations (see also Baldwin, 2005; Hiadt, 2001). Brewin (2006) has explored such phenomena in terms of accessibility of emotional memories.
